Back in Richmond at Plan 9 records there are a few boxes of 7"s that no one in their right mind would want. Records so wack that not even the mere pittance of a dollar will make them disappear. This very box, however, has delivered up to your humble narrator some precious jewels, and I count it among the things I miss about Richmond. So to celebrate Richmond's brilliant music scene, without further ado, the dollar bin band search!

First up is More Fire For Burning People. It is a cruel twist of fate that this band ended up in the wack stack and with a mere fifty cent price tag to boot. The drums on Utah alone are worth the once standard rate of $2.25 at least and a whole lot more in terms of karma. These two songs are good, tight, but I miss the companion cassette. Those songs ruled. Hopefully Brian and Curtis will get back to business since their various meanderings have brought them both back to Richmond.

Utah
Naked



Next on the list is Mulch's classic Driven Down. Not only was this record only $.50 but someone had penciled in "sucks" on the front. I couldn't resist. The first time I saw Mulch, I had come up from Williamsburg to see the Dwarves play (who were supposed to be returning after their infamous Richmond show). They didn't show up, so I end up going to see Elvis Hitler and Mulch at Twisters instead.

Antiseptic Sting
My Constant Struggle With Reality
Hit Me Like A Smell



Gore DeVol. I never got the story on that name. I always associated it with the writer, Gore Vidal, who I'm a big fan of. Mulch and Gore DeVol share a drummer, Fred LaPierre, who also ties in to How To Pray which Chris Suede covers on his site. Metal played guitar in this band. He and I bonded over having ridiculous nicknames that exist in spite of ourselves. My nickname, Blade, happened because there is a Sabbath song on Never Say Die called Johnny Blade. My friends Mike Chapman and Tom Jeremiah thought it would be awesome to get everyone to start calling me that. It worked for a while. I'm not exactly sure how he got his nickname. The story as best I recall it is that he called up his future roommate over the summer before he moved to Richmond. The kid wasn't home, but Mike got to talking to his mother. She asked him what kind of music he was into and he said, "Metal!" Thus was Michael transformed into METAL. Or something.

Hooked
Ruglip


I was actually in Nudibranch around the time these songs were being written (though I never got to record with them). I played a few shows in Richmond and went on tour to New Orleans and back with them and Chutney. I've known all these guys for years and am infinitely inspired by all the music they come up with. How the fuck Nudibranch winds up in the dollar bin is like, why the country is run by slovenly pig-fuckers. There is just something wrong.

Synthetic Division
Countessa
Silver Lady
Sick Room


Orlock wins for best cover art. I love that image. Orlock simultaneously evolved out of Nudibranch on the one hand and serves as a prequel to all future Wade projects. This record evokes that weird paranoid time in the mid to late 90's where things were just getting more and more bizarre. We'd had a Democrat in office for four years with four more to go (who, like any Republican, found good reason to bomb the shit out of people all the time, both here and abroad). Aliens of the outerspace kind were ubiquitous, my entire household was living in an alternate reality caused by William Cooper's Behold A Pale Horse (who oddly enough was shot to death by cops a few days after 9/11). Average art students were undertaking intelligence agency-level activities under the rubric of investigation in the name of art. And plus, weed doesn't make you paranoid at all.

Ambulance
Spanking
Seizure


Unlike the rest of the bands so far I don't really have a point of reference for this band. I think I only saw them once at the Hole In The Wall. You can tell they've been playing their instruments for a long long time.

Good Times
O Tse Can You Tsee
Sucker
Mao Tse Theme


I know equally little about First 5 Thru. The main thing I remember about this band is that they were supposed to play a show with the Jesus Lizard at the Metro at one point. The show had a $7 cover (and mind you, this was the era of Fugazi and their no show over $5 policy), so FFT decided to boycott the show and play for free in someone's living room instead. I don't know if this helped or hindered the JL's guarantee, and either way, I didn't attend either show. I like the guitar and drums on this record, but the vocals get on my nerves a bit...

Summation
Stop
Embrace
Issac

The Guns and Dope Party is the only Political party that the St. John the Pabstist Show endorses wholeheartedly.

The Professor Chutney, now the International Gentleman, I think, and once Pap Smirnov even, turned me on to Hakim Bey. Bey's conception of the Temporary Autonomous Zone has informed many of my projects since, most notably the Cutthroats which is not a whole lot more than a dance party on bicycles. Anyway, I recently found these mp3s of a radio broadcast and a recording of some talks given at a TAZ happening in San Francisco a decade ago. Featured are Hakim Bey, Rob Brezny, Nick Herbert and Robert Anton Wilson. Nice.

TAZ 1
TAZ 2
TAZ 3
TAZ 4

I'd have to say that Glass Cobra/Steel Anaconda is one of the least commercial bands I've ever been involved with. Lyrics typically came from works of literature such as Dante, Baudelaire, books of masonic rituals, and even safety instructions. Music is all improvised on the spot. One take only. That being said, it does have its moments. Here are some highlights from some mid-nineties sessions. John Cardell, Tom Jeremiah, Joel Lindelof, Tony Brown, Mike Chapman, prolly some others too, but...

Baudelaire Poem
Weed
Gimmie Some Love
Masonic Ritual

Anyone who knows me, knows me as much more of a book nerd than a music nerd. I love to read, I have since I was a child. One of the writers I'm most interested in now is David Foster Wallace. I was first turned on to DFW by my friend Sumo who works at Borders. I was in there wasting time as is my wont when Eric approached and said "what's up, sucka muthafucka." After the initial greeting ritual, he started telling me about this story I had to read. So he grabs Wallace's Girl With Curious Hair, flips to the title story, and sits me down in a big comfy chair. Twenty minutes later I'm walking out the door with it.

I'm no expert on this guy and I haven't even read all his books, but he is my favorite right now. So I managed to find a round table discussion he had with some students on the internet. The sound quality is crappy, and most of the questions he's asked are inaudible, but he speaks pretty clearly so it's still pretty informative.

David Foster Wallace-Intro
DFW 1
DFW 2
DFW 3
DFW 4
DFW 5

Here's a reading by DFW this one at the Hammer Museum in conjunction with KCET.

DFW Podcast



I don't know what I'd reccomend for a new reader. I personally enjoyed Brief Interviews With Hideous Men it's another collection of short stories, but there is a recurring motif (as suggested by the title) where several "stories" are actually interviews with various men in dialectic form, though none of the questions are written, merely a Q: The answers are those given by various men whose "techniques," for lack of a better word, render them a touch hideous. These interviews pepper the book among (slightly) more conventional "stories." If you're the adventurous type, and maybe you've already read Gravity's Rainbow or War And Peace, or something, then you should definitely try Infinite Jest. This book makes use of footnotes as an art form of its own. If that makes any sense. Trust me, if you have a few years, go ahead and invest in this classic. It will never cease to amuse and awaken you.

My friend Neale Shafer put a Daisy Chainsaw song on a mix tape he made for me back when I was still in high school. It was "Pink Flower" off the 7" of the same name. I was hooked. I loved how poppy the songs were, but they were still grossly distorted and with this insane sounding chick singing.

Fast forward a few years. I'd just moved to Richmond and soon after found out that Daisy Chainsaw was playing at the 9:30 club on Halloween. Fuck yeah! So me, Neale, and Erik Sugg packed our bags and headed up there. They were giving away flexis (as pictured above) at the door and halloween masks so those of us without costumes wouldn't feel left out.

After the opening band played (Sugar Smack I think) the lights dimmed and the band started making noise. Katie Jane Garside was on stage with a baby doll and a drill. She kept saying "I hear you've been talking about me," in this maniacal voice. She was wearing a fairy looking dress and had long blue hair, and kept saying that over and over while occasionally drilling holes in the baby dolls head. The baby had band-aids on either side of its head. Eventually she ended up perched on a chair hanging over the audience as the music kept getting louder and louder. Then she jumps off the chair and slams down hard on the stage which cues the band to launch into "I Feel Insane." It turns out her hair was a wig and her head had band-aids in the same place as she was drilling the baby doll's head. Fucking nuts.

Love Your Money
Pink Flower
Sick Of Sex
All The Kids Agree
Room 11
Hope Your Dreams Come True
Propeller Punch
Queue For Transatlantic Alien